Mamelta told Silk, 'If you have more, you must give them to me.'
'I don't. There were seven left after Orpine's rites, two left from Blood's sacrifice, and the one that you saw me find. I've given them all to you to repair this poor monitor. I never knew that money ...'
'We must have more,' Mamelta said.
He nodded. 'More if I'm to save my manteion, certainly. Far more than ten. Yet if I take back those ten cards, he'll be as he was when we arrived.' Exhausted, Silk leaned against the wall, and would have sat if he could.
'Have you eaten? There is food on board.'
'I must go back down.' He sternly repressed the sudden pleasure her concern gave him. 'I have to see it again. The monitor- Is this really a kind of boat?'
'Not like the Loganstone. This is smaller.'
'Its monitor was correct, in any event-what I saw from the bow was something I was meant to see. But you're correct as well. I should eat first. I haven't eaten since- since the morning of the day we went to the lake; I suppose that was yesterday now. I ate half a pear then, very quickly before we said our morning prayers. No wonder I'm so tired.'
Small dishes swathed in a clouded film that Mamelta ate with obvious enjoyment grew almost too hot to hold as soon as the film was peeled away, and proved to be pressed from hard, crisp biscuit. Still shivering and grateful for the warmth, they devoured the dishes themselves as well as their contents, sitting side-by-side on one of the many divans; all the while, the monitor inquired, 'Is it time? Is it time?' until Silk, at least, ceased to hear it. Mamelta presented him with a deep green twining vegetable whose taste reminded him of the gray goose he had offered to all the gods on the day he had come to Sun Street; he gave her a little dusky-gold cake in return, though she appeared to feel that it was too much.
'Now I'm going to go down into the bow again,' he told her. 'I may never return to this place, and I couldn't bear it if I hadn't gone again to prove to myself forever that I saw what I saw.'
'The belly of the Whorl?'
He nodded. 'If that's what you wish to call it, yes-and what lies beyond the belly. You can rest up here if you need to, or leave if you'd rather not wait for me. You're welcome to my robe, but please leave my pen case here if you go. It's in the pocket.'
A little food remained, with some of the crisp dish; but he found that he did not want either. He stood up, brushing crumbs from his ash-smeared tunic. 'When I come back, we-I alone, if you don't want to come-will have to return to the tunnels to recover the azoth I left there when I met the soldiers. It will be very dangerous, I warn you. There are terrible animals.'
Mamelta said, 'If you have no more cards, there may be other repairs I can make.' He turned to go, but she had not finished speaking. 'This is my work, or at least a part of my work.'
The ladder was the same, the pinpricks of unimaginably distant light the same, yet new. This otherwhorldly boat was a shrine after all, Silk decided, and smiled to himself. Or rather, it was the doorway to a shrine bigger than the whole whorl, the shrine of a god greater even than Great Pas.
There were four divans in the bubble below the end of the ladder. While eating with Mamelta, he had noticed thick woven straps dangling from the divan on which they sat; these divans had identical straps; seeing them, he thought again of slaves, and of the slavers said to ply the rivers that fed Lake Limna.
Reflecting that straps stout enough to hold slaves would hold him as well, he dropped to the upper end of the nearest divan and buckled its uppermost strap so that he could stand on it, virtually at the center of the bubble, while grasping the last rung.
By the time he looked out again, something wholly new was happening. The plain of rock had blanched unwatched, and was streaked with sable. Craning his neck to look behind him, he saw a thin crescent of blinding light at the utmost reach of the plain. At that moment it seemed to him that the Outsider had grasped the entire whorl as a man might grasp a stick-grasped it in a hand immensely greater, of which no more than the tip of the nail on a single finger had appeared.
Terrified, he fled up the ladder.
Chapter 11. SOME SUMMATIONS
'Auk ? Have you forgotten me?'
He had thought himself utterly alone on the windswept Pilgrims' Way, trudging back to Limna. Twice before he had stopped to rest, sitting on white stones to scan the skylands. Auk was frequently outdoors and alone nightside, and it was something he enjoyed doing when he had the time: tracing the silver threads of rivers from which he would never drink, and exploring mentally the innumerable unknown cities in which the pickings were (as he liked to imagine) considerably better. Despite Chenille's insistence, he had not believed that she would actually remain in Scylla's shrine all night; but he had never supposed that she might overtake him. He pictured her as she had been when they reached it, footsore and exhausted, her face shining with sweat, her raspberry curls a mass of sodden tangles, her voluptuous body drooping like a bouquet on a grave. Yet he felt sure it had been her voice that had sounded behind him. 'Chenille!' he called. 'Is that you?'
'No.'
He rose, nonplussed, and shouted, 'Chenille?'
The syllables of her name echoed from the rocks.
'I won't wait for you, Chenille.'
Much nearer: 'Then I'll wail for you at the next stone. '
The faint pattering might have been rain; he glanced up at the cloudless sky again. The sound grew louder- running feet on the Pilgrims' Way behind him. As his eyes had traced the rivers, they followed its winding path across the barren, jutting cliff.
The clear skylight revealed her almost at once, nearer than he had supposed, her skirt hiked to her thighs and her arms and legs pumping. Abruptly she vanished in the shadow of a beetling rock, only to emerge like a stone from a sling and shoot toward him. For an. instant he felt that she was running faster and faster with every stride, and would never slow or stop, or even stop gaining speed. Gaping, he stood aside.
She passed like a whirlwind, mouth wide, teeth gleaming, eyes starting from their sockets. A moment more and she was lost among stunted trees.
He drew his needler, checked the breech and pushed off the safety, and advanced cautiously, the needler in his hand ready to fire. The moaning wind brought the sound of tearing cloth, and her hoarse respirations.
'Chenille?'
Again, there was no reply.
'Chenille, I'm sorry.'
He felt that some monstrous beast awaited him among the shadows; and although he called himself a fool, he could not free himself from the presentiment.
'I'm sorry,' he repeated. 'It was a rotten thing to do. I should have stayed there with you.'
Half a chain farther, and the shadows closed about him. The beast still waited, nearer now. He mopped his sweating face with his bandanna; and as he wadded it into his pocket, he caught sight another, quite naked, sitting on one of the white stones in a patch of skylight. Her black dress and pale undergarments were heaped at her feet, and her tongue lolled from her mouth so far that she appeared to lick her breasts.
He halted, tightening his grip on the needler. She stood and strode toward him. He backed into deeper shadow and leveled the needler; she passed him without a word, stalking through the leafless spinney straight to the edge of the cliff. For a second or two she paused there, her arms above her head.
She dove, and after what seemed too long an interval he heard the faint splash.
He was halfway to the edge before he pushed the safety back up and restored the needler to his waistband. Heights held no fear for him; still, he knew fear as he stood at the brink of the cliff and stared down, a hundred cubits or more, into the skylit water.
She was not there. Wind-driven combers charged at the tumbled rocks like a herd of white-maned horses, but she was not among them.
